How to Tell if Your Boyfriend Is an Alien

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ah, young love. The first time you fall for someone, it can be dangerously easy to overlook the warning signs. For the first few months, your boyfriend might seem like the funniest, most creative, most insightful, and handsomest guy you’ve ever met. It won’t matter that he roots for the Mets or says vague stuff like that he’s “not from around here.” After some time together, though, you’ll start to spot your boyfriend’s little quirks. Maybe he picks his nose while watching TV, or maybe his skin heals faster than it should. The truth is, a lot of teenage boys are dirtbags in disguise. Some of them, however, are hiding something much stranger. Some are aliens.

There are several scientific ways to determine if your boyfriend is an extraterrestrial. Although no human experts have studied this particular scenario, many have extrapolated from our understanding of life’s building blocks on Earth to propose what life on other planets could look, sound, and feel like. Remember, if you read this article and conclude that your boyfriend is, in fact, an extraterrestrial, Inverse doesn’t condone you dumping him. Like any human teenager, he might just need a reminder to buy you flowers every once in a while. There isn’t any scientific evidence showing that aliens are more likely than humans to be jerks.

Here are some ways to determine whether your boyfriend is from another planet. You can dump him or try to understand his ways once you figure it out — that’s up to you.

If he has trouble understanding your emotions

Chances are, extraterrestrial life isn’t as intellectually advanced as we are. In 2018, retired NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman guessed in an episode of National Geographic’s One Strange Rock that aliens are likely very simple organisms. “The overwhelming probability, if you find a planet with life on it, it’s probably going to be very simple life,” he said. After all, Earth has only housed intelligent human life for approximately 0.008 percent of its existence, so the idea that another planet has been developing its life forms at the exact same rate of evolution as ours is extremely small.

That means a lack of emotional sophistication could suggest that your boyfriend is an alien. If he ever says things like, “I don’t get why you’re freaking out,” “Can you chill,” or “I am a single celled organism,” well…you know what you need to do.

If he’s always asking to meet at a dark bar or movie theater

Think about it. Is he a little too eager to hand over his jacket, almost as if he doesn’t need it? He says he doesn’t want to do early morning yoga with you because he stays up late working, but is it possible that he’s extremely sensitive to light? When he looks deep into your eyes, note how big his pupils are. Do they appear to have developed over time to help him see in the dark?

Many have theorized that deep-sea creatures on Earth are our best estimation of life on other planets, as much of our oceans are still unexplored, and they’re the only familiar places that can replicate the pressure, lack of sunlight, and harsh weather conditions aliens would have to live through on other planets. The Washington Post proposed in 2017 that the discovery of dark energy, or chemosynthesis — the inverse of photosynthesis, deriving energy from sunlight — said more about the possibility of alien life than it did life in our oceans, the only place we’ve discovered it on earth.

If he’s always talking about his high school sports career

A 2017 study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, scientists from the University of Oxford argued that extraterrestrial life forms are likely to undergo natural selection, as species do on Earth. Sam Levin, one of the researchers on the study, writes that his team decided to “use evolutionary theory to make predictions that are independent of Earth’s details. This is a useful approach, because theoretical predictions will apply to aliens that are silicon-based, do not have DNA, and breathe nitrogen, for example.”

Even if your alien boyfriend breathes nitrogen and has never seen an episode of The Office, he’ll probably try and relate to you by sharing stories you can understand. Humans enjoy narratives about heroes under duress, underdogs, and overcoming odds stacked against you. We’ve always assumed those stories were inherently human, but your boyfriend might be living proof that stories of struggle translate across planetary cultures. So, even if he played some unrecognizable sport in high school and made varsity, you can understand why that memory means something to him, even if he played the game using his tentacles.

If he’s always using outdated TV catchphrases

Alien theorists have long wondered if our TV signals will reach extraterrestrial life before we do. Because Carl Sagan mused on the idea in his book Contact, the aliens in the 1997 film adaptation communicate with Earth using outdated TV visuals they received decades before.

According to senior astronomer Seth Shostak at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), a TV signal would have to have a high-enough frequency to break through Earth’s ionosphere in order to reach aliens. Speaking with Real Clear Science, Shostak said, “However, it would have been very low power, and with a non-directional antenna. The idea that aliens might pick it up is pretty far-fetched.”

Even more likely than old TV, your alien boyfriend may have heard the many, many musical albums Earthlings have sent into space. If he’s, say, way too into Spanish electronic music, his planet could have received the signal sent out by Barcelona’s music festival Sónar, which sent 33 separate 10-second clips of music into space to mark its 25th anniversary. Astronauts have also sent music from Bach, Chuck Berry, and Blur into space. While Bach and Berry are both understandable, that last one is a dead giveaway. If your boyfriend is a big Blur fan in 2019, call SETI.

Still not sure if your boyfriend is an alien? Check out Roswell, New Mexico, Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW, just in case.